Charters : 2.03 Information Packaging and Registry Working Group

 

Agencies need to reduce the cost and increase automation among applications associated with the exchange of information applications and those facilities that produce, distribute, and store information. CCSDS has been a leader in developing data packaging techniques and their association with the registration of schemas/data definitions.  CCSDS has produced several standards in this area that are in active use within agencies, and include those known as Standard Formatted Data Units, Parameter Value Language, Control Authority Procedures; and Control Authority Data Structures; however, the speed of technology change including the emergence of XML as a standard data description language, the vast increase in the size and interrelationships of space data, and the emergence of the Internet as a data delivery mechanism requires that vastly different versions of these documents be written. Also, the vast increases in space-hardened computer power and communications bandwidth allow techniques that previously were considered ground system only to be utilized in end-to-end space data systems. The large size and binary nature of space prevents the direct usage of commercial or international earth-based standards.

The goals of this Working Group include:

1) Collect use cases from the space operations community and develop requirements for XML data packaging; Based on these requirements, develop a set of recommendations and best practices documents that specify an extensible framework for packaging data and metadata that can contain an object physically, or by reference (e.g., Universal Resource Locator (URL), Universal Resource Identifier (UR), or by Universal Resource Name (URN).  This includes the ability to express appropriate relationships using XML and related techniques, and the implementation of the packaging format in an appropriate set of network and file protocols;

2) Oversee the deployment of at least two independent implementations of the packaging framework; Conduct prototyping and interoperability tests in many areas of space data systems (refer to the Resource Requirements paragraph);

3) Based on the experience gained from the interoperability testing of the XML packaging software and use cases and requirements from various space data and operations groups, participate in the development of an extensible registry/repository architectures that address interfaces, data structures and information modeling.  This registry/repository should leverage the more widely based registry work such as ebXML and UDDI while supporting any special space-based operations registry/repository requirements.

4) Develop specific Registry/Repository standards that support the data packaging registry/repository requirements  focusing on the support of XML Schemas and associated XML objects.

5) Transfer any XML tools and best practices developed for the XML Packaging and Registry/Repository tasks to the MOIMS Area Director for use in other CCSDS Working Groups.

6) Act as the responsible Working Group for any CCSDS Recommendations in the area of Information Understanding (Structures and Languages (formerly CCSDS Panel 2). This includes performing any CCSDS or ISO 5 year reviews of existing standards and monitoring any new activities by CCDS member agencies in this area.

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The Packaging Recommendation functionality has been split between two planned releases of the XFDU Packaging Recommendation to allow early prototyping of required capabilities. This should allow lessons learned in the prototyping to influence the design of the more complex capabilities

Also a wide variety of use cases and testing environments have been identified for the Interoperability Testbed for XFDUs:

• NASA PDS;

• NASA/EOSDIS Libraries;

• NASA SLE implementations;

• CNES SLE implementations;

• CNES Archive Ingest SIP development;

• ESA Data Distribution System;

• ESA CAOS.
This range of environments should identify any efficiency or operability problems that must be solved either in the best practices document or by further implementations.

In the area of Registries and Repositories, overlapping membership, frequent discussions and a minimum of one FTF meeting with the Information Architecture BOF/WG and  the SANA WG in the Systems Engineering area to avoid significant duplication of effort or significant divergence of concepts. It is recommended that a SIG be created to develop  an extensible registry/repository architecture that addresses interfaces, data structures and information modeling the area of Registries and Repositories. IPR will be heavily involved in this SIG. To limit the schedule risk, the initial IPR involvement in this SIG will be limited to 4 months.

Unavailability of resources could delay achievement of milestones. Fallback option would be to reschedule the milestones.

If an unexpected number of major RIDS are received from the agency review of the XFDU Red Book, it could delay achievement of milestones in both the XFDU and XML schema Registry. To minimize the potential impact the role of XFDU Green Book editor has been reassigned from NASA to CNES.

There may be a conflict for resources between the Registry/Repository activities and the XFDU V2 activities. Fallback would be to do the activities in sequence with the member agencies deciding on priority. The IPR members have clearly indicated that an XML Schema Repository is the highest priority and the schedules have been adjusted to reflect this priority.